


A Life For a Life

by MelissaMelody



Series: RoyEd Month 2020 [9]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Talk of Suicide, desperate lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24287458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelissaMelody/pseuds/MelissaMelody
Summary: It took the entire period of the next blink for whoever had been let in to sit. Ed couldn’t turn his head, but the pickling under his skin told him that they’d sat on his left. It had been a long time since someone had sat on his left in a hospital.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Series: RoyEd Month 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726057
Comments: 1
Kudos: 53





	A Life For a Life

Ed blinked slowly. He didn’t want to. He’d rather have proper control over how quickly he could blink. The lights were bright, and he would do anything to shut them out.

Not that he deserved any better, in hell.

“He’s awake, but we’re not certain how responsive he will be,” said a voice Ed didn’t recognize. It was soft, had a round tone to it. Reminded him of his mother.

_ Hell, I’m so sorry Mom. I’m never gonna get to heaven and see you. _

“Thank you,” replied another voice. Ed thought he recognized it, but it was hard to tell under the raspiness of the voice. It wasn’t a natural rasp, or a smoker’s rasp. It sounded like the person had been crying.

It took the entire period of the next blink for whoever had been let in to sit. Ed couldn’t turn his head, but the pickling under his skin told him that they’d sat on his left. It had been a long time since someone had sat on his left in a hospital.

_ Wait. Why am I in a hospital? _

“You’re an idiot,” the raspy voice said. Ed wanted to turn his head, to look at who it was. His eyes stayed on the ceiling. 

“Heroin? Really? The sort of damage to your body, they were asking me and Alphonse how long you had been a drug addict you  _ idiot _ .”

_ Not Al. Who? _

“I think I would have believed it, y’know, if I didn’t know that opioids never did work for you for pain.” The raspy voice huffed. “Of course,taking enough heroin in one go to kill a horse and surviving it sounds oh so much like you.”

Ed worked his mouth. It was dry and clammy at the same time, the dampness stuck in one spot for so long it didn’t count as wet anymore.

_ I’m not dead. _

“Suicidal. Why couldn’t I see you were suicidal?”

Ed strained to move his eyes, look to the side, turn his head. Whatever it took to see the person who cried so hard for him.

“Alphonse said he won’t come get you. That you burned too many bridges and that he won’t sacrifice his own happiness for you. Gave them my name. And so here I am.”

A weight the size of a house fell of Ed’s chest all of a sudden. He let out a wheezing groan, finally gaining enough control to close his eyes. He’d lost everything except the one thing he wanted to.

“You can hear me, then,” the voice said. It was clearer now, and Ed knew who it was without having to look. “What in the hell do you have to say for yourself?”

Ed didn’t speak, didn’t trust himself to open his mouth and make any sense at all. The world was rushing back into him and he didn’t want it to, he wanted to shut it all out and ignore it. He wanted to shut it out forever. 

“Out of all of the people in the world that I thought wouldn’t come to someone for help, I didn’t think you would be on that list,” Roy Mustang said. “I’m on it, I know that much. Fuck, I’ve practically earned a bullet through my skull. But you? Bright and beautiful and brilliant you? No. I would have had to be presented with your body before I’d believe you were even dead, let alone at your own hand.”

The memory came back now. The anxiety and heart rate from making then preparing that batch, of finding the perfect place to hide and die.  _ One I won’t get noticed in before I die, but one where I’ll still be found quickly and sent to Al. _

“Of course, it’s always in your grandest schemes that you fail, isn’t it?”

Ed let out a sob, still unable to move properly, to curl in on himself and hide under the blanket and try to shut the whole goddamned world  _ out _ .

“It’s probably for the best that your grandest ideas fail, y’know.” Mustang sighed, and there was a weight on the side of the bed that Ed couldn’t hide from yet. That didn’t mean he had to look that weight in the eye. At the very least not yet.

“Your first one brought you to me. So did the second one. This one brought me to you.”

Ed kept crying, kept trying to roll away from the weight and into the darkness and just wanted to get somewhere dark and quiet where none of it existed.

“If I offered you my life, would you take it?” Mustang asked. His voice was so broken it pulled Ed in just like every sharp thing he had handled in his life had. “Or would you spend the rest of it with me?”

Ed opened his eyes and looked up, meeting Mustang’s gaze. 

“Losing you broke something, Ed,” he said. “My life is yours because if I lose you to this I’m going to follow you somehow.”

“Just let me go,” Ed rasped back. His throat hurt too much to say more.

“No,” Mustang said. “If I let you go I won’t have anything else to hold on to.”

Mustang looped his fingers around Ed’s left hand and raised it to his face. He pressed gentle kisses to each knuckle, then just held it there. His skin was warm, scratchy with stubble. 

“My life is yours, Ed. What do you want for it?”

Ed stared, then his mouth started working without him asking it to.

“Equivalent exchange.”

“Deal.”


End file.
